Category: analysis

In years to come, dads will tell their kids about the Accumulation Period. It went like this. At around an ODI’s 20th over, the batsmen would decide to only score runs by lapping down to third man, the dibbly-dobbly bowlers would lazily chuck down (sometimes literally) 6 overs each on a nagging length at 4.5 an over – everybody woke up at around 35 overs to rack up an imposing 280.

The accumulation period – bad for watching cricket.

For fans, it was a chance to get things done. If you were at the ground it was time for (mostly liquid) refreshment, and starting, participating in and resolving fights before batsmen started hitting out again. If you were watching at home it was possible to get in the car, get a few jobs done and get back to the couch via the bottler and the drive-through without missing too much.

The accumulation period – good for chopping beer

Those days are over. Post CWC15 going batshit is the new accumulation period, 400 is the new 300 and bowlers are the new cannon fodder.

The Influence Of T20, big bats, pitches friendlier to batsmen than liniment and boundary ropes slinking from the fence like a Shane Warne walk of shame are all being blamed for turning the Once-Dying Format into an experience like watching eight hours of highlights.

If this England / BLACKCAPS series was a blue light disco, the batsmen were the ones who necked a cask of screwdriver in the car park and spent the night dancing and pashing, while the bowlers sat alone, looking moody, thinking about how they can’t feckin’ stand Come On Eileen.

Big bats – a scourge on the modern game.

So is this what it’s going to be like from now on, with death bowling required for 50 overs? Limited overs innovation has given us new-ish bowling tricks like the wide yorker and slow bouncer to limit the damage – but they don’t seem to be working on the feather bed pitches, in this series anyway.

There’s talk of changing the ball, the ropes, the bats and the power play format, but cricket is notoriously slow to change its rules (which is a good thing when compared to Rugby, who are always up for a bit of Touch, Pause, Shambles). sportreview.net.nz suspects future re-balancing of bat v ball will come from bowlers, captains and coaches working out new plans or indeed, groundsmen having mercy. Big scores and big hits sell tickets, I expect ICC leadership or action is unlikely to swift or potentially effective.

Anyway. You probably remember Kevin Pieterson from being England’s all time Test run-scorer. And from Piers Morgan’s Twitter account. Trust issues between KP and former team mate / current England director of cricket meant his involvement in this series has mainly been online, where he’s been putting his hand up loud and clear.

Man who once scored 158 at the Oval to win the Ashes returns to pose about in puce chinos.

A clear message to Straussy – KP’s fit and ready to go.

Tequila > Powerade.

Football eh? The beautiful game. The footwork. The tactical intricacies. The drama. The partying alongside a shirtless Chuck Blazer in a sweet Dubai mansion that you own.

With all the he-said, she-said and unprecedented large-scale arrests, it can be hard to keep up, so here’s sportreview.net.nz’s guide to the key players.

Blatter, Sepp

Football’s answer to both Baron Silas Greenback and Tony Soprano. Inexplicably voted FIFA president time after time, due to world class Teflon coating shielding him from multiple and prolonged corruption allegations, not to mention all sense of shame or irony.

Blatter promised to stamp out systemic corruption in football, but then prioritised commissioning a feature film showcasing his contribution to football, turning Tim Roth from Mr Pink to Mr Stink at a stroke. Resigned after a corruption-related arrests of his henchmen senior officials, who are now lining up to dob him in faster than Alex Ferguson losing his temper. Still serving as FIFA President.

Warner, Jack
Suspended and sacked CONCAF President now under arrest. Great mates with Blazer, Chuck. Brilliantly, was totally sucked in by this Onion article. Has promised to name and shame FIFA wrong do-ers. To the highest bidder.

Blazer, Chuck

Thank you, thank you, thank you. If your sport is going to end up down a cesspit of sleaze, it may as well be lead by a gargantuan American called Chuck, all belly, beard and cheesy grin who’s no stranger to a strangephotoop.

A keen blogger, Chuck worked his way up from chief CONCAF wheeler dealer to FIFA’s marketing supremo, while lining the Blazer pocket the whole way. Once the IRS took him down, he was only too happy to roll over like Stephen Gerrard defending the centre circle. He and Bernie Madoff are going to get on famously in prison. Recommended long read.

Ali, Prince

No-one knows anything about Prince Ali except that he’s a prince and seems as dynamic as a Dido album. But because he ran for FIFA president against Sepp Blatter, he became a folk hero. For five or six minutes.

Super Bowl isn’t just about American Football, nachos and TV ads. It’s also the biggest day of the year for otherwise sensible folk to make their best ‘I don’t understand sport’ jokes on Twitter.

The Super Bowl, which happens on a plain old Monday at the office for us in New Zealand seems to be the, ah, Super Bowl of this kind of thing. The combination of the timing, the bizzaro nature of American Football at the best of times, combined with a good proportion of the world being really into it gets Twitter comedians excited to use their best material on this day.

The classic format is basically cramming as many sporting terms as you know into a tweet in an ultra-irony-fest-ista. Or just making something up. For heaven’s sake, you wouldn’t want anyone to actually think you know / care about this shit. It goes like this:

“Wow, a sports guy just body slammed the basketball one into the stumps lol”

“Touchdown! Or a try! I don’t know!”

“The Tampa Bay Sailors are so wasting the Milwaukee Cunninghams !”

Etc. It goes on. And on.

Look, perplexing stuff happens on Twitter all the time, as anyone who follows a proportion of the parliamentary press gallery knows. And the plethora of awards shows at this time of year? I have no idea.

American Football is not my favourite sport, and I like a good troll as much as anyone, but this line of humour in moribund. All the jokes have been done, team.

So how about we raise the bar? I challenge the non-sport interested to do something funnier and more original with this material. Or even watch a bit to see what’s going on.

The newest ex-Tottenham manager, Tim ‘gilet‘ Sherwood was asked to jog on today after taking Andre Villas-Boas’s eye-wateringly expensive squad to sixth in the league.

Tottenham fans can be certain of a few things – our best players will be sold to United or Real Madrid and our managers will be sacked in a seemingly counter-intuitive fashion. Chairman Daniel ‘Step into my office’ Levy has binned no less than TEN managers since 2001. Admittedly the Premier League is hardly the bastion of managerial job security, but students of the game will note that during this period Arsenal had just Eagle look-alike Arsene Wenger, and Man U had just Sir Alex Fergusson (and Fergie Lite for just under one season) and have a shedload more trophies through that period than our two League Cups.

But, because you don’t have enough pointless run-throughs of other people’s misery in your life, here’s a run through Tottenham’s managerial hanging gallery under Levy.

New dawn, same as the old one

George Graham (1 Oct 1998 to 16 March 2001) belonged in Nick Hornby books, not at Tottenham. There were rumours that the Wembley crowd sang his name when we beat Leicester City one-nil in a depressing final, thanks to an Alan Neilsen scrambled-in-with-his-head goal, but I reckon that was bullshit. Graham’s era was all Alan Sugar scowling, ugly Pony kits and Ruel Fox. When Levy’s group brought Sugar out, sacking George Graham it was classic pandering to the fans by getting the boring football, one-nil, hoof-it-up merchant from Arsenal out of the dugout. Little did we know it was the start of a depressingly familiar pattern.

Glen Hoddle (2 April 2001 to 21 Sept 2003) as a player is everything Tottenham is about. The unexpected and the sublime. No-one could stand around the centre circle spraying passes with their shirt out and socks around their ankles looking as cool as Goddle. His dedication to football’s aesthetics and un-willingness to tackle made him a hero at the Lane, and a misunderstood nearly-man for his country.

His nasty shooting oneself in the foot habit stopped him being great as a manager. With England, his fine team was knocked out by dastardly Argentina in a fantastic match, but then became embroiled in faith healer and unforgivably crass-comment controversies. At Tottenham there was euphoria and hope that finally we had a smart young manager that would lead us to attractive-passing-glory, etc etc etc. The reality was more mundane and Glenda was moved on six games into the 2003 season with Spurs in the relegation zone.

Andre Villas-Boas (3 July 2012 to 16 Dec 2013) may yet become one of the best managers in the game, just not at Tottenham. His intense, academic, player-alienating moneyball approach had early success, but after spending an un-Tottenham SHITLOAD of cash on players with no Premier League experience between them and seeing them struggle, he was given the support of the board and time needed to put his managerial plan into action, despite the initial hiccups*.

*Just jokes, he was sacked.

The in-betweeners

If Harry Redknapp felt like a knee-jerk-ingly English appointment, Martin Jol (5 Nov 2004 to 26 Oct 2007), Jaques Santini (3 June 2003 to 5 Nov 2004) and Juande Ramos (29 Oct 2007 to 25 Oct 2008) felt like knee jerk ‘let’s get one of them Europeans in’ efforts. Santini was a mystery, hardly there really before resigning of his own accord. Ramos won a trophy (the good old League Cup), but was woeful in his first actual season, while Jol managed over 150 games in charge, almost making the Champions League early on (if it wasn’t for a dodgy lasagne). He certainly raised the bar, getting us into the top six or thereabouts consistently. Jol was certainly affable and had a decent amount of time, but was ultimately not the answer we were looking for.

The good old Tottenham boys

David Pleat, Clive Allen and Tim Sherwood are cannon-fodder. Men with Spurs in their blood lured to the White Hart Lane bench on a hiding to nothing, then binned as soon as something better happens along. Expect to see Steffen Freund in this role in the near future.

And so, we enter another summer, a World Cup one at that with no idea who’ll be in the cockerel blazer at the start of the next season. sportreview.net.nz’s dream appointment remains Jurgen Klinsmann, but as he’s taking the USA to the World Cup, that seems unlikely.

Arsenal are a handy club to compare ourselves with, and even though their fans may grumble about lack of investment etc etc etc, with Wenger their team has out-Tottenham-ed us at the pretty football, they’ve been in the Champions League every year and have many more trophies that count. Maybe all this swap and change is part of the culture. Notoriously fickle Tottenham fans are quick to get on a manager’s back when things aren’t going swimmingly and Levy, apparently a local lad and fan, is generally quick to give the fans what they want. As he looks for his 11th Tottenham manger, he may reflect on his own role in overseeing this shambles. Hopefully some out-of-the-box advisor advises picking someone decent and sticking with him. We’ve given everything else a go – why not have a crack at stability?

Seemingly-sleepy All Blacks coach Steve Hansen managed the national team to a well-comfortable win against the Ockers last night. There were a few work-ons, but these days everyone’s disappointed if there’s no work-ons, so champion work all around.

Like I tweeted, I thought Steve Hansen really dug deep on the pre-match mind games, with a cooly delivered two card trick that, all going to plan, would have had new Wallabies coach Ewan McKenzie rocking back and forth on the shower floor before he’d even started a game.

Bam! Press conference taken over. The man with the toughest job in the country doesn’t have time to muck around with *questions*, he’s got to get inside his opposite’s head and get back to training and that, quick smart.

Hansen:“…is he feeling a bit mentally challenged because he doesn’t know what five-eighth he wants to play. …I’m imagining that when Robbie Deans…”

Blammo! “Doesn’t know what five-eighth he wants to play” is as organised as leaving the house without your phone or brain when it comes to picking an international rugby team, while the words ‘Robbie’ and ‘Deans’ are shorthand for ‘worst case scenario’ and as welcome as a Dom Harvey dick pic in the Wallabies camp. Related – I expect to hear more, much more, about Dingo in All Blacks pressers in the weeks ahead.

Pow! This is Hemmingway-like – so much conveyed in such economical fashion. There’s (at least) three points here:

1. This little McKenzie / Cooper chat is indeed what everyone was imagining what was going on when Deans was coach, and McKenzie recalling Cooper was indeed one of the key arguments for restoring Wallaby X factor. Plan B had better be good, Ewan.

2. YOU HAVE INFORMATION? INFORMATION THAT’S RIGHT?!?!?

3. “The other bloke.” This says: “I don’t even know what this guy’s name is, and certainly can’t be arsed wikipedia-ing it.”

Hansen:“Now there’s only two reasons they wouldn’t want to tell them, one he’s not sure himself…”

Balooga! Can you say “You’ve waited an age for this chance, and now you’ve got the big job with the Qantas blazer and everything, you have no idea what you’re doing?” Bonus points for pausing a good two or three seconds before continuing, just to let that point sink in.

Hansen: “…or he doesn’t think they can handle the pressure of being out in public too early. Doesn’t bother us, don’t mind a hoot who they play.”

Zlott! indeed. Hansen wraps up this little elbow-in-the-ribs-using-words with a cold, hard truth – the All Blacks really couldn’t give a used jockstrap who the Wallabies field. On the XXXX side of the Tasman it’s new starts, rebuilding and the unknown, while the All Blacks have the luxury of choosing between world cup winners, or up-and-comers that look like they’d treat the Wallaby onslaught with all the ease of a Care Bear onslaught. Not easy to get a good night’s sleep with that hanging over you.

And after the never-in-doubt 47-29 win, Hansen finished the job he’d started mid week with: “But I think they’ve got the nucleus of a very good side and I think they’ve had a nucleus of a very good side for a long time.”

Ka-blam! Sorry Ewan, but Shag reckons changing coach hasn’t made the slightest bit of difference – you’ve got a bit to do to prove you’re not Dingo in disguise.

According to the Usbourne Book Of The Future, the EPL over the internet thing is just the start – in a few short months, we’ll be enjoying sport like so:

This vision of the future promises an air of effortless sophistication, characterised by a robot butler serving drinks, fridge-sized headphones, just ONE remote control (preposterous) and, disturbingly, a houseguest monitoring your neighbours with a video camera.

The only thing that hasn’t changed in this scenario is sport itself – this is a 70s-style-eyebrows-and-sideburns game with disturbing-goings-on-in-the-background. No sign of goal line technology or isotonic drinks here.

Future sport can also be retro, if you consider Running Man‘s relaxed atitude toward participants’ health and safety, which feels like a throw back to the have-a-go 70s:

Could be a Stihl branding op there.

With the rise, and then full scale takeover of modern TV programming by reality TV, the Running Man premise feels a lot less surreal and depressingly conceivable, and could easily take place weeknights at seven in the very near future.

Future football is a dystopian affair, taking place on a ship (presumably all the land and that fell into the sea years ago, and is probably Winston Peters’ fault), where former highly paid stars of the Champions League are forced to score goals for bread and survival, presided over by a clearly even-more-insane-than-usual Eric Cantona (that’s pretty insane). I’d buy a subscription to that, for sure.

Charmingly, future cricket appears remarkably similar to today, if a little more pastoral. Green grass, white clothing, wickets. No dramas. The only concessions to modernity appears to be the addition of a few new lines on the outfield, the use of six new balls (building on recent developments there), and players being confined to a box during play.

For now, the sport that seems like its been beamed-in from the future is arguably the All! New! America’s Cup.

Oracle get fully extreme to starboard or something.

Once, the Cup had a charmingly shambolic vibe of sunburn, rum and mad scientists in back sheds devising super-kebab-ed keels or turbo bowsprits that would crush those dastardly Americans in their own back ocean. But Russell Coutts’ America’s Cup seems more X-Games than Newport, more Tron than Sailing Away. It’s a Simpsons-esque attempt to modernise itself, and not one that’s captured the public’s imagination, beyond mouthing ‘fuck that’ while watching it on the sports news.

One possible path for future sport is where new, grassroots sports spring up, in a move away from the globalised path we’re on, like in Baseketball:

A possible Kiwi version of this would be BBQ-Melee, where contestants arm themselves with gas bottles and tongs, and chase each other through suburban backyards. The player with the most garages at the end of 14 days is declared the winner. It would be compelling viewing, as long as a passing game doesn’t requisition your satellite dish for a weapon.

But more likely, future sport is going to be about robots, whether it’s camel racing:

…boxing…

“The name’s Iron Mike.”

…surfing…

This robot will not only out-surf you, but schmooze more girls at the beach than you.

In any event, non-carbon based players could be a real game changer. Any robot All Blacks will have the mongrel calibrated to 11, be able to detect when they are off camera and commit atrocities on Australian robots at those precise times, and can be programmed not to go to Japan.

Sportreview.net.nz says we should welcome our new robot overlords. Any future that has Alien taking on Predator at Swingball like a suburban idyll is one this website wants to live in.

In Australia, the dossier on the South Africans has got a lot of coverage, after being carefully couriered leaked to an eager Aussie media. The document seems to mainly prescribe:

a. short pitched bowling, and

b. sledging

…which makes you wonder if the jandal-lickers’ tactics have moved on since the days of Ian Chappell etc. It’s as innovate as wandering into the Aussie’s dressng room and shouting ‘everyone grow a moustache!’. Still, it should be a fantastic series for cricket lovers bored with watching Sri Lankan groundsmen moving covers about.

Picture included mainly because of ‘how awesome is this?’

The All Blacks have been on a full on Scottish social media assault, instagramming the locals and digitally tweeting themselves hoarse. Gone are the days when All Blacks like Meads, Lochore or Murdoch would turn up in the mother country to glower at the press and organise a big pub fight before boarding the plane having not actually said *anything* over the two months’ tour.

The All Blacks’ end of year tour has fallen into a fairy comfortable routine now, we either do the ‘warm up by smashing a couple of easy beats, before playing Wales then England’ or the grand slam, which is pretty much the same thing. Australia and South Africa do the same, which must be pretty depressing for the about-to-play-the-Six-Nations locals. Imagine if some guys turned up and smashed us for a month just before we played the Rugby Championship. More depressing than being Clive Woodward I’d imagine.

I’ll leave you with Rod Stewart crying, probably the best sporting thing that actually happened this week:

The biggest villain in NZ sport isn’t Eden Park hot dogs or Stephen Jones’ Twitter account. Not since we turned on that stupid Tiger Woods for the way he treated the always-cheerful Stevie Williams has NZ been as united in its scorn for an athlete. Office prophets of doom around the country who’d put the boot into Adams like they were starting a troublesome motorcycle, immediately got in behind Adams and turned their scorn-lasers on Ostapchuk.

The situation now is that Ostapchuk has gone totally troppo in Belarus, refusing to hand over the medal and alleging Adams is ‘totally’ on drugs. NZ’s sporting media were quick to move from their previous ‘reporting the news’ responsibilities to ‘defending Valerie’s honour’ responsibilities, labelling the accusations a ‘pack of lies’ and labelling Ostapchuk ‘troppo’ so that Adams didn’t have to. Adams’ ‘4 more yrs lol’ texts to Ostapchuk went largely unreported.

In the national game, Steve ‘sleepy’ Hansen faced off against Robbie ‘no mates’ Deans for the first time in the opening Bledisloe. Deans is as popular as jandal snot in Australia for his coaching ‘record’ in Australia, making a list of All Blacks Australians love to hate. In fairness to Robbie, ‘rugby public hating the national coach’ has always been a key factor in New Zealand rugby, so he appears to be on the right track. On Saturday’s performance, Deans has lured the rusty All Blacks into a false sense of security of full blanket, milo and Coro levels. If Robbie was hoping to turn the tables on NZ at world cup time, he obviously missed the memo that tournament took place last year, and you have to question the advice he’s getting.

We’ve had a pretty decent Olympics, to say the least. Gold medals! Aussie baiting! Learning about our propensity to measure ourselves against the rest of the world sporting-success-wise in unrealistic terms!

The 2012 Olympics has been a gold medal bonanza for NZ, but more importantly, we learned a lot about ourselves and each other, with Val Adams and Nick Willis manfully (and womanfully) coping with the expectations of a nation and a nation’s media in a much, much more mature fashion than the nation. To our credit, we’ve reduced the time in which we go from ‘teenager denied Fall Out Boy tickets by the man’ tantrums to ‘hey you guys, they’ve done their best’ over ‘lost’ gold medals to a few minutes, way down from 25 years as per rugby world cup cycles.

Our rowers were obviously our stars, but I was most pleased for Keirin rider Simon van Velthooven, who got the tied-for-bronze medal after an agonising wait against an absolutely top class field. And our equestrians, who exuded an air of wanting to get all the facking horse riding bore out of the way fast, so they could get on with getting on the lash, what. Bravo.

This has been dubbed the ‘social’ Olympics, ‘cos people are using the internet now and that, in the same way that trips to the loo with a smartphone are dubbed the ‘social’ ablutions. And so, sportreview presents a selection of Olympic links. Enjoy.

There’s a new dawn in Auckland. It’s not a second harbour crossing made up of trained dolphins ferrying commuters to the city on their backs (sounds cheap Mr Joyce!), or a ‘no arseholes’ rule in the Viaduct, set to transform the area into Tuesday night Invercargill main street within a week.

No, it’s the return of the prodigal son, world cup winner John ‘mad butcher’ Kirwan, back from Italy and Japan and, much to Twitter and headline writers’ amusement – the abyss.

The best thing for Kirwan is there’s no matches for almost a year – the feelgood factor the Blues could generate by not actually playing rugby could well last until twenty minutes into their first match in 2013.

I hope JK goes well – but posts like these and comments like these it’s clear the Warriors, who announced a series of youth programme and community initiatives last week are miles ahead in the having-your-shit-together metric. Except for on the field. No-one has their shit together there.

In rugby-teams-that-are actually-playing news, the sportreview-approved Chiefs go into Friday night’s big ‘clash’ as underdogs, thanks to the Crusaders’ cheating ways. In a DAMMING EXPOSE, stuff.co.nz’s EPIC TROLL Mark Reason details all the ways the Crusaders have CHEATED their way to seven titles, including:

Waiting in the car park before games to influence referees by beating them up.

‘Signalling’ at Bridge

If the Chiefs do overcome the CHEATING Crusaders and go on to win the title, the Chiefs players would no doubt run into the chicks from the Magic, who’d still be downtown on the daiquiris after winning the ANZ Netball Championship. If the Chiefs and the Magic were to go full-Mad Monday together, it could result in a generation of Waikato sporting superstars that would dominate the national sporting scene for decades to come. sportreview.net.nz’s postion is: this must happen.